1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to high power amplification systems and, more particularly, to a power added efficiency optimizer capable of reducing thermal run away.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a high-power, high-frequency, and broad band amplifier application, thermal run away is one of the most difficult problems of the design. The thermal run away comes from self heating of a solid state device when used under amplifying conditions. Conventional solutions to this problem often involve development of adequate heat sinks from bulk conductive material to support the thermal conditions under which the device must operate. Heat is generated in an amplifier due to inefficient transfer of power to the output stage. The output stage can be an antenna directly, a circulator, diplexer, another amplifier, etc. Whatever is not converted by the transducer operation of the amplifier into transferred power, which for a communications system is DC to radio frequency (RF) power, is directly transferred to heat and wasted.
A natural consequence of designing linearization electronics for amplifiers has been somewhat mitigation of inefficiency. In other words, efficiency improvement has been a consequence of applying a vast array of linearization techniques to power amplifiers. It has been necessary to apply such techniques because of the high degree of nonlinearity underlying transistors exhibit especially for power driving amplifier stages. As a by-product of such techniques, efficiency is improved, but thermal run away has remained unaffected.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improving high power amplifier applications.
There also exists a need for reducing the thermal run away associated with high amplification conditions.